Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Aiming, as always, for complete accuracy (within reason) I scanned in a map of the City of Victoria (upside down because we are looking south).

I ‘stroked’ the shoreline, and telescoped the foreground (Select>Edit>Free Transform) to lower the viewpoint.

I sketched, filled and stroked the mountains with solid colours and filled the sky and sea with gradients. Then, I cooled the colours shifting everything toward blue. I added features various Brushes, Filters and Fading Modes. Then, I turned this panorama into a night scene by overlaying an indigo/purple gradient at about 30% opacity and adding stars.

Finally, I painted Christmas lights, and spread them around town with random combinations of pattern stamps – a picky process, but much easier than putting up the real thing.

About Me

Charlene Brown is a Canadian painter who started writing about painting trips during the ten years she and her husband lived in Dubai. The Gulf Weekly began publishing her accounts of painting trips in that part of the Arabian peninsula -- then said they might consider other countries, even such exotic locations as Canada! She had written about painting trips in over twenty countries by the time her husband retired and they returned to Canada to live.